“Okay, so which Dane in here do you want to screw?” Amelie asks me.
We only got to the bar a few minutes ago and we’re sitting on a couch in the corner with a full view of the patrons. Only I’m just idly looking. I’m thinking of Aksel this whole time.
“Um, no one yet,” I say, taking a sip of my drink. It’s called a Nuda Veritas and it’s supposed to make me tell the truth. God, I hope not.
“No one? They’re all Nordic Gods. Dirty Danes. You know, if I didn’t have my boyfriend…” she glances at me. “You’re not even trying.”
I both sigh and swallow at the same time and nearly choke on the drink. “I don’t want to,” I say, coughing. “I’m fine.”
She squints at me. “Mmhmm. Yes. I can see that. Is that anything to do with your boss?”
I give her a steady look. “No.”
“He seemed rather concerned that you were going out. Is he always this controlling?”
Now, I can’t tell if she’s asking me this on a professional level or a friendly level, but even so, there’s only one answer. “He’s not controlling. I mean, he is a king and all and I’m his employee but if you’re asking me if it’s a problem, no. It’s not.”
He can be extra controlling in the bedroom, but I know that’s not what she’s asking.
Or, I hope that’s not.
“You do have a special…bond with him, no?”
I shake my head. “No. Not really.”
She leans forward, brushing her bangs out of her eyes to get a better look at my face. “Really?”
“Yeah,” I tell her, pasting on a smile. “It’s all fine. I love this job.”
She studies me for a few moments and then leans back in the couch, taking a long sip of her drink. “D’accord. Then all is well.”
I just nod.
All is well.
Until the night is over, and Henrik has taken us back to the palace.
It’s much later than I thought it would be, nearly 1 a.m., when we stumble up the stairs to our rooms. Amelie is in one of the guest suites which is near Aksel’s room and I figure that there’s no way he wants to see me tonight anyway. He’s either waiting up for me, seething, or he fell asleep.
I say goodnight to her and go to my own room.
I remove my clothes, step into a nightshirt and head to the bathroom, only then noticing a note on my desk.
I’m in your bathroom.
What the fuck?
The note has been torn from my day planner, which I don’t appreciate, and scribbled with a Sharpie. Only I don’t know if it’s Aksel or not since I don’t ever recall seeing his handwriting.
“Aksel?” I call out quietly.
I head to the bathroom door—which is closed when I know I left it open—and slowly open it, reaching in to flick on the lights.
Aksel is standing right by the door and I almost scream, jumping up and down in fright.
“I left you a note,” he whispers harshly.
“I know!” I cry out as softly as I can, my heart racing. “That didn’t make this any less scary! Why are you in my bathroom?”
“I needed to see you.”
“In my bathroom?”
“In your room.”
“So wait in the room.”
“I didn’t know if you were coming home alone.”
I nearly bite my tongue. “Seriously? You really thought I was going out to pick up guys?”
“Well why did you go out?” He comes out of the bathroom and I notice how wild his eyes are, the firm clench of his jaw. He’s mad. For no reason.
“I went out because I’ve been living in this city for half a year and I’ve never gone to a bar. That’s why.”
He mumbles something in Danish at that and I don’t care to know what it is. “Well, you could have told me that.”
“I didn’t tell you because it doesn’t really matter in the long run. I did it because Amelie came here, and she wanted to. And I haven’t had a girl’s night in a long time.” I pause. “Still doesn’t explain why you were hiding in my bathroom.”
“It’s hardly called hiding when you leave a note.”
“Whatever.”
“Don’t whatever me. Never whatever me.”
“Oh, sorry, whatever, Your Majesty.” I add under my breath, “Fucking opposite of majestic right now.”
“What?”
“Nothing.”
He grabs my arm. “It’s not nothing,” he says and beyond his frown and the sharp intensity of his eyes, I see the fear. “And nothing is whatever between us, do you understand? That’s not how we talk, that’s not how we work. We don’t just roll our eyes and ignore shit. We deal with shit. And that’s why I’m in your fucking bedroom right now because I couldn’t go to sleep with this weight in my heart.”
Oh. Damn.
I didn’t know it was like that.
His words almost have a calming effect on me. “Well what are you so worried about?” I manage to say.
“You,” he whispers, closing the gap between us and cradling my face in his hands. “I worry about you. I worry about losing you.”
“Why would you think that? I’m all yours, Aksel.”
“How do I know? How do I know you’re not after something else?”
I think anyone else might be insulted, but I know what Helena did to him, I know how distrustful of intentions he can be. I place my hands on top of his hands and gaze up at him with all the truth that I can muster, hoping he can read in my eyes before he hears it from my lips.
Falling for Aksel was a step off into the unknown, a leap off the highest cliff, with clouds obscuring the view below. You don’t know what lies below you, you don’t know how far you’ll fall or if you’ll even land at all. You don’t know anything because no one knows anything.
And it doesn’t even matter. Life is nothing without risk.
I closed my eyes, took that leap, and fell in love.
I’m still falling.
“Jeg elsker dig,” I tell him, willing my voice not to shake. “I love you.”
I said it in English after I said it in Danish, just in case he didn’t understand me and yet he’s still staring at me like I spoke a foreign language. His brows come together, almost in pain, his mouth dropping open slightly.
His hands press harder onto my face and I start biting my lip, unsure what’s going to happen next. That’s the problem with the leap when you can’t see the bottom. You don’t know where you’re going to end up.
Or if someone will catch you in the end.
I open my mouth, unsure of what else to say, maybe to explain myself.
But his lips press flush with mine and there’s a breathless gasp.
He pulls away just enough, his forehead pressed against mine, gazing wildly into my eyes. “Did you mean that?”
I nod, swallowing hard because I’m getting choked up and I can’t say much more without babbling. “I meant it. I meant it. I love you. I’ve loved you for a long time, it’s just taken this long to find the courage to tell you. And I wanted to tell you. I wanted you to know that I love you.”
“You love me,” he whispers, closing his eyes and rocking back and forth slightly on his feet. “You love me. I am home.”
Tears spring to my eyes. “Home?”
He nods, just an inch, brow forever furrowed. “I’ve waited forty years for my heart to have a home,” he says softly. “I’ve waited for you.”
Sweet Jesus.
Is this man for real?
My heart is so damn full, I don’t think my chest can contain it anymore.
If that isn’t the most raw, honest thing that anyone has ever said, I don’t know what is.
And more than that, I relate. I know. I know what it’s like to search for something, not knowing what it is, feeling restless and unrooted and wondering if you’ll ever find your place in the world.
I’ve found my place. It’s in his arms.
My place in this world is with him.
; He kisses me again and it’s like everything dissolves into stars.
Then he pulls back and grins. “You do know I love you, right?”
I smile right back. “Well, now I do.”
He lets out a soft laugh. “I love you.” He kisses my nose. “Jeg elsker dig.” My cheek. The corner of my mouth. “I love you, Aurora, and there’s no escaping it anymore.”
“You tried to escape?”
He shakes his head, kisses my temple. “It was hopeless. I thought I could get you out of my system. But you’re in my system. You’re in my blood, in my veins. I feel you with every pulse and every heartbeat that I have. I feel you, always”
This man, this man.
How can I be this lucky?
How can we be this lucky to find each other?
All these souls in all this world and I end up at his door.
I pull back slightly to look him in the eye. “You keep talking like that and you’re going to get it.”
He pauses, cocks a brow playfully. “Get what, exactly?”
“Anything you want,” I tell him.
“Oh really,” he muses, then his expression turns serious. “First I want you to promise me that you’re not looking for someone else.”
Bloody hell, this again?
Gently, I tease, “Are you jealous?”
“Jealous? Of some other man taking you away from me? Fearful is more like it,” he says. “But jealous works too. I’m not above admitting it. I love you and I can’t share you with anyone else. I won’t.” His voice cracks just a little which makes me think this is a little more than just plain old jealousy or insecurity. “You belong to me. I belong to you.”
It makes me wonder about Helena. About some of the things Henrik alluded to, that perhaps she had someone else, that she wasn’t faithful.
Shit, if that was the case, Aksel really got handed the shit end of the stick.
“Aksel,” I tell him, running my hands around to the small of his back. “If your heart has a home, mine does too. We can make a home together.”
He seems appeased by that, the creases in his brow smoothing.
“You really are a goddess,” he murmurs, kissing me again.
“And yet, I’m at your beck and call,” I say against his mouth. “You tell me what to do and I’ll do it.”
That got his attention, like I knew it would.
He cranes his neck back to get a better look at me, dubious. “There you go again.”
“Tell me what you want,” I say again, teasing him. I take a step back out of his grasp, biting my lip coquettishly. “Perhaps you think I need another spanking.”
“Where on earth did you come from?” he says breathlessly.
“Australia.” I grin at him and start to undo the drawstring to his pajama pants. “So what will it be, sir?”
Now I have him.
A sly, hungry smile graces his lips.
“Get on your knees and call me Your Majesty.”
That I can do.
Chapter 19
Aksel
April
“I think I’m going to be sick.”
I look over at Aurora who is holding onto the railing and leaning over, looking positively green.
“Hang in there,” I tell her. “If you keep going below like that, you’ll only make it worse. Stay up on deck with me.”
“But it’s cold and wet up here,” she says. “And it’s warm and dry downstairs.”
Her words are punctuated by a slap of water to her face as the hull dips against a whitecap.
It’s the first sailing trip of the year, which means it’s late April and the waters around the Øresund Strait are rough thanks to the winds and the endless traffic of schooners, ferries and cruise ships that ply the waters nonstop.
We’re heading down away from the city and toward the Baltic Sea where we’re going to find anchorage for the night.
My sailboat is the same one that I race, locally made and sixty-feet long and recognizable to most of the Danish public, yet everyone gives me wide berth as I tack the boat back and forth down the strait. Of course, I’m also closely followed by a motorboat that contains my royal attendants and I also have my driver, Johan, on board with us, just in case.
Johan actually loves sailing, so he doesn’t mind taking over the wheel from time to time. Right now he’s down below with Clara and Freja who are on their iPads playing games. They’re used to sailing too.
But for Aurora, it’s her first time on a sailboat and I don’t think she’s handling it all that well. I felt a little wary to begin with when I invited her to come, but the girls were insistent that she do the trip.
I’m glad she’s here, even if it means we get no privacy together for the next twenty-four hours. We’ve come into a habit with each other that we at least spend half the night in each other’s beds, even if it means we have to do a secret walk of shame at four in the morning back to our own room.
I really wish it wasn’t this way. She seems okay with the sneaking around, but it gets under my skin like nothing else. I don’t want to have to hide her. I’m proud of her. I want the world to see what I see in her, what everyone else sees in her. She’s charming and genuine, kind and smart, unfiltered and compassionate, part book nerd, part goddess, and all mine. She’s a goofball with big eyes and a big heart and every single morning I get up wondering how I can make her happy, over and over again.
Suffice to say, I’m failing at the moment.
“Come over here,” I tell her, holding out my arm.
“I might chunder on you,” she says.
“I don’t know what chunder means, and therefore, I don’t care. Now, come here. That’s a royal order.”
That manages to get a weak smirk out of her. I’ll take what I can get.
“Remember when you said you would never abuse your power.” She unwraps her hands from around the railing and stumbles toward me, leaning on the ropes and winches until she’s at the wheel.
I put my arms around her, hugging her from behind. “Put your hands on the wheel.”
She does so, and I put my hands on top of hers.
This is the most intimate we’ve been in public.
To Johan or the girls below or the royal attendants on the other boat, it looks like I’m giving her a sailing lesson.
They don’t know that I’m kissing the top of her head, salt spray on my lips.
They don’t know that I’m pressing an erection into the curves of her ass.
They don’t know that I’m whispering in her ear.
“Jeg elsker dig.”
I love you.
Though I can’t see her face, I can feel her smile. She hooks her thumb onto the side of my hand and squeezes.
“Jeg elsker dig,” she whispers back, but I barely hear it, her words caught by the wind.
I’ve never felt so much in my element before, I’ve never felt so alive. Here, on the boat with her protected between me and the wheel, I feel pure happiness rise out of me, like a phoenix from the ashes of the person I once was.
Nothing can take this moment away from me, I think. Not even death will erase this from my mind.
I’m not sure if Aurora is picking up on how I’m feeling or if she’s just doing better, but she doesn’t go back inside. She stays at the wheel, even as I’m pulling ropes and letting out sails.
She’s made of hardy stock, that’s for sure. When she first took the job, I thought that her “roughness” would be a detriment to the position. After all, it was all about poise and grace and raising two princesses. But instead of poise and grace, she brought grit and guts. She rose to every challenge that the girls and I threw her way, and more than that, she rose up against me. She did it for the things she believed in and if it didn’t go her way, she’d argue her way out.
In other words, she’s the perfect woman to take sailing, because even with feeling seasick, she’s still toughing it out, because that’s what she does.
She’s the perfect woma
n period.
And now I’m tasked with figuring out how to make her stay.
Forever.
With me.
Naturally the biggest issue so far is that I haven’t been entirely honest with her and I know that day of reckoning is coming. I just pray that what we have is strong enough to survive it.
“Hey!” she says excitedly, pointing in the distance where the strait opens up and the Baltic Sea spreads before us. “A rainbow!”
I’m currently bringing in the main sail to adapt to the changing wind and look around it to see a defined rainbow in the distance where the clouds are parting and the sun is coming in.
“The wind should be dropping soon as it comes around Sweden,” I tell her. “The seas should calm.”
She gives me her happy grin. Her mouth has always been wide for her face, her smile so beguiling, but when she’s really, really happy, that’s when you see her incisors. I call them her glade tænder or “happy teeth.” She becomes a sexy adorable vampire.
“It’s smooth sailing from here on out,” she starts singing a Queens of the Stone Age song, doing a goofy little dance at the wheel.
I laugh, wanting to join in but don’t.
“Oh, you’re too cool to dance with me,” she says with a scoff.
“I’m not the best dancer,” I admit, quickly tucking the ropes away and coming over to her.
“I don’t believe it,” she says. “You’re way too good at f….” she trails off and laughs loudly, covering her mouth. Dear god, she almost didn’t stop that admission. Neither my daughters or Johan need to know how good I am in bed.
“I’m good at footless, yes,” I say, as way of a cover-up. “But not proper dancing.”
“Well, I’m sure you’re good at slow dancing if anything. Kings have to know all that shit, don’t they?”
“Yes, we have to know all that shit.”
“Then perhaps one day you’ll ask me to dance.”
She’s still smiling as she says this, but there’s something heartbreaking about it. Like we both know the only dancing we’ll ever do is in our bedrooms.
I hate this. I love this so much and I hate it at the same time.
I hate that we’re trying to stifle whatever this is meant to be.
A Nordic King Page 24